


Quantum

by nostalgia



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Did They or Didn't They, F/M, Quantum Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-12
Updated: 2011-11-12
Packaged: 2017-10-25 23:16:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/275933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nostalgia/pseuds/nostalgia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amy takes a personal interest in science.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quantum

**Author's Note:**

> For tasty_kate

“So, quantum theory,” she started, making it seem like it came from nowhere. “That's the thing with the dead cats, isn't it?”

The Doctor snorted. “If you've ever put a live cat in a box you'd know how silly that example is.” He turned a dial on the console and frowned to himself. “Not much fun for the cat, though, is it?”

“It's not a real cat,” said Amy. “It's a thought experiment.”

“I know that,” he said, with the slightest trace of irritation in his voice. “Ah, quantum uncertainty. That takes me back.”

Amy propped herself against the console and watched him fiddle with the controls. “To university?” That could be interesting. She wondered how the Doctor of all people would manage to misspend his youth.

He shook his head. “No. To the nursery. Fairy tales and hypercube building blocks and... do you know about quantum entanglement?”

She didn't, but she took a guess anyway. “Is it to do with the wee strings?”

“Good guess, but totally wrong. Two particles,” he said, demonstrating with his hands, “interact, and then when separated continue to reflect changes in each other. Romantic, isn't it?”

“Not really the word I would have used.”

“Not that you're _right_ about any of it, but it's still quite an impressive discovery.”

Amy tilted her head to one side. “You just like winding me up, don't you?”

He moved behind her to the other side of the console. She breathed in as the trailing edges of his jacket brushed against her.

“I'm a Time Lord, winding things is second nature to me.” He paused for her to get the joke. “Sorry, that wasn't very funny, was it?” he asked when she failed to laugh.

“Are you going to explain the dead cats to me or not?”

“I'm not going to fill your head with nonsense, no.”

“Spoilsport.”

 

“So we're in this cell,” she said, the following week. “With no windows.”

“Fish,” said the Doctor.

“And... what?”

He looked over at her. “We're playing I-Spy, aren't we?”

Sometimes Amy wondered if he really was mad. “No, we're not.”

“Oh. Sorry. Carry on.” He put his hands behind his head and leaned against the stone wall of the cell.

“As far as anyone outside knows, we could be lying here dead.”

The Doctor shook his head. “No, I'm fairly sure they want to keep us alive until the public execution.”

“Just run with it, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Or we could be shagging,” she continued. She paused to wait for his reaction.

“But we're not,” he countered, disappointingly unfazed by the suggestion.

“As far as anyone knows we could be. I could be having an orgasm right now.”

The Doctor looked at her with some interest. “Are you?”

Amy sighed. “Are you really that dense? Is it all just an act or are you some kind of space-virgin?”

“I thought you liked uncertainty?”

“Very funny.” She shifted into a more comfortable position. “Have you had sex with River yet?”

The Doctor took a while to answer. Then he said “I've kissed her.”

“And?”

“And it was quite pleasant.”

“Great, I'm trapped with a man who has no capacity for a good gossip.”

The Doctor made a face. “I suppose now you want to talk about make-up and boys.”

“How old do you think I am, exactly?” she asked, half-fearing the answer.

“I boycott L'Oreal and Robbie was my favourite member of Take That. Now do you want me to braid your hair for you?”

“You're completely bizarre, Doctor.”

“Thank you.”

They sat in silence for almost a full minute before Amy said “Was it good for you?”

“Was what good for me?”

“The sex that we might have had just there.”

“Amy,” said the Doctor patiently, “I have not had quantum sex with you.”

“How would you know?”

“Because in this scenario I'm the cat and the cat itself always knows that it's alive. Cats make excellent observers.”

“I've had better,” said Amy, bitterly.

 

Amy hadn't had sex with the Doctor. She was almost certain of this. It was just that certain of her fantasies came with a nagging sense of deja vu and....

Amy had slept with the Doctor. She was pretty damn sure that it had happened. It was just that certain memories didn't seem to fit with anything else and...

 

She couldn't just ask straight out if they'd had sex, that would just make her seem weird. Not that she usually minded, but the Doctor was... well, he was the Doctor. He might just see it as a good reason to take her home again, poor delusional Amy Pond. Or maybe he'd lie about it. He was a man, after all, alien or not.

His mixed signals were no help. One minute he'd be touching her hair and calling her wonderful, the next he'd be talking down to her like she was still a little girl waiting in the garden with a suitcase. Sometimes he seemed on the verge of kissing her, then he'd pull away and carry on talking like nothing had happened.

Of course, she couldn't sleep with him _now_ , because... because... She scratched at her ring finger absently as she tried to work out why she wasn't just dragging him to the bedroom at that very moment.

But at some point, she was sure, they'd had quantum sex.

 

“How do you know if the cat's dead?” she asked on a trip to Venus, dangling her legs out the door of the TARDIS in a storm of what the Doctor assured her was metal snow.

“Easy, you just open the box. If your face is still there after you've done that then the cat died.” He leaned against the door-frame and added “Radiation sickness is a horrible way to go.”

Amy thought about what the box was and how to open it. “What if it's locked?”

“Then the cat continues to be alive or dead and therefore both until someone observes it.”

So that was that. Amy pooled her resources and asked. “Have we had sex?”

The Doctor shrugged. “Possibly.”

She pulled her legs in and turned to stare at him. “What the hell does that mean?”

“I'm quite capable of remembering more than one timeline, you know. What if I hadn't pushed you away in your bedroom? What if we'd met in different circumstances? What if you hadn't...” he tailed off, frowning.

“If I hadn't?” she prompted.

He shrugged again. “Sometimes I think you're not mine to want.”

Amy jumped on the second part of the sentence, the first bit not even making it to her short-term memory. “So you _do_ want me?”

The Doctor stood up. “Amy, I don't think you realise where we are. This is _your_ universe. I'm _your_ Doctor. Not wanting you is... I literally can't imagine it being any other way.”

Amy stood up as well and watched him close the exterior doors. “Are you saying I _made_ you want me?”

“I don't know,” he said, wiping a speck of imaginary dirt from the back of the door. “Rebooting a universe is a complicated thing, the theory breaks down at the point of creation. It doesn't necessarily mean anything that I can remember... you.”

“You mean you remember us having sex.”

“Sometimes. Usually.”

“Doctor, I really don't think I've got a good enough imagination to remember the universe _wrong_. I don't even understand how I could remember it _right_ when I barely know anything about it.”

“I helped,” he said. And that, apparently, was the end of that conversation.

 

They had definitely, unambiguously had sex when he next raised the subject. Amy was lying against him, sweat-covered and listening to the _thump-thump_ of his hearts.

“Have you ever wanted something,” he asked, “but something was stopping you from getting it?”

“All the time,” she said.

“Didn't you wish you could rewrite the universe so that thing just didn't exist? So that you could have whatever you wanted?”

Amy raised her head to look him in the eye. “I don't think I like where this is going.”

“Something's different.”

“Different how?”

“Different in that I can't think of a single reason not to be here with you right now.”

“River,” she suggested, instantly hating her better instincts.

“Oh, she's a mystery. You've always liked a mystery, Amy.”

“So maybe there _isn't_ a reason. Maybe you were just playing hard to get.” She laid a hand on his cheat, right between his hearts, put some of her weight on him.

“No, there were reasons before. Before...” He lapsed into silence.

Amy decided to change the subject. “Can we do that again?”

“If you like,” he said. He seemed a little bit dimmer, somehow. “No reason why we shouldn't.”

Amy grinned, hoping it would reach her eyes. “I like this universe. I think I did a good job.”

“You did,” the Doctor agreed, and she wondered if he could ever think anything else.


End file.
